


A Phone Call Home

by Airplanesandcookies (Mosgirllee)



Series: untitled Derek Nurse fics [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Based on tadpole tour, Casual Racism, Gen, Microaggressions, alternate POV, comic remix from Nursey's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 08:59:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11643234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosgirllee/pseuds/Airplanesandcookies
Summary: “I know I won’t play hockey forever, but like, I feel like I owe it to myself to play as hard, as best as I can for as long as it’s fun, and it’s still fun.”The first in a series of short stories about Nursey and his life at Samwell.Based on this episode: http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/90770286862All Check, Please characters and the green Haus couch belong to Ngozi.





	A Phone Call Home

Derek’s mom, Dana, picked up on the second ring.

“Baby! I didn’t expect to hear from you or Naimah until tomorrow.”

Derek glanced over his shoulder into the student lounge in Faber and walked a little bit down the hall.

“Yeah but I think I made up my mind on what school I want to attend.”

Derek could hear the click of his mom’s heels as she quickly walked to her office door and closed it. “Alright then , walk me through it. The three choices were big Andover, smaller Andover, and not at all Andover .”

Derek chucked as he perched himself on the arena bleachers. The spring sun had finally started to set and it cast a beautiful glow across the ice. 

“I think it’s going to be little Andover.”

His mom hummed. “So it came down to hockey in the end” she stated.

“Not exactly. It was a huge part of my decision but not everything.” Derek bit his lip and tried to collect the fragments of his thoughts into something organized like a stack of index cards. “I was completely ready to write Harvard and Samwell off and send my acceptance to Hampton.” His mother hummed, actively listening. “I mean, I really wanted to go to an HBCU. Like, when I visited Hampton and Morehouse’s campuses, I felt like I got to breathe for the first time without this weight of ‘am I going to have to constantly prove I belong here’. 

Dana made a soft sympathetic sound in her throat. “That makes sense to me.” 

“But…at the same time, it was like I had to learn how to play with a whole new set of rules. I still got sized up and that one guy who showed me around Hampton was like, “Hey money, I can tell you are more the Lenny Kravitz type than a Carlton.”

“Huh, I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or what.” 

“Right?” Derek twisted his cap around on his head and pulled it over his eyes a bit. “I’ve played hockey for so long. Like, it was my first real love. Do you remember when you signed me up with that Pee-wee league and then we had to go and figure out the equipment?”

His mom chucked, “I had no idea what to buy. I think I just handed the list to an employee at the store.”

“But mom, as soon as I put on the shoulder pads and the skates, I knew I was going to play for a long time.”

“So, why Samwell and not Harvard? Both offered scholarships for hockey.” 

Derek scanned the arena again before speaking up. “Samwell was more diverse. I really liked the unofficial tagline ‘1 in 4’. Like that’s way more room to figure myself out. And like, you know how I always scan the crowd, look for other faces like mine. The campus was pretty similar to Harvard, but mom, the hockey team here…One of the upperclassmen, Justin Oluransi is black Canadian was like, ‘I’m going to take care of you. I got your back’. And there’s a incoming freshmen, Chris Chow, who is mad hyper, but like, one of the nicest dudes I have ever met in my life.”

“Good team?” 

“Oh my God, mom!” Derek looked around again and lowered his voice. “Oh my god, it’s so cool, I get to play with Jack Zimmermann. Son of hockey legend, Bad Bob Zimmermann.”

Derek could hear the clicking of keys in the background and the startled huff of laughter, “Does this boy have a website dedicated to his butt?”

“I’m not surprised. But if you keep reading, he was supposed to go first in the draft three-four years back, but he disappeared suddenly after some nasty rumors about an overdose, but mom…I was so ready to be unimpressed, right? I was going to be so disappointed if he turned out to be that guy who got another chance but didn’t appreciate it? I saw it so many times at Andover, guys being bailed out who didn’t even realize how stupidly lucky they were.”

Dana gave a quiet hum.

“But like but he may be one of the greatest hockey players I have ever seen and he’s so quiet and so intense. Like, this was a freshmen tour and we still ended up borrowing equipment, walking the ice and running a few drills. It was a half hour and I can feel that my game improved.”

She sighed in relief.

“I know I won’t play hockey forever, but like, I feel like I owe it to myself to play as hard, as best as I can for as long as it’s fun, and it’s still fun.”

“Then you should continue to play at the highest level you can.” Her voice was watery over the phone. 

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe who else is on the team! Do you remember Bart Knight? He was a senior when I was a freshman?”

His mom barked out a deep laugh, “It is impossible to forget Mr. Knight. Did that mustache actually grow in or is it still that patchy peach fuzz?”

“Somewhere, Tom Selleck is very proud.”

Dana chuckled. 

Derek huffed a bit as he listened to the sound of a few voices raising down the hall, before he continued. “It’s not perfect, but I think Samwell is it.”

“Honey, I can hear you thinking about a red flag. You wanna talk about it?”

“Yea, I mean, it’s probably nothing. I mean, not everyone on the hockey team was as perfect as Ransom.”

“…Oh! I forgot about those hockey nicknames. What’s his name, Oluransi?”

Derek nodded.

“What happened?”

“So, I take the train into Boston and while I’m at the station waiting for Naimah to drive over from Harvard to pick me up, I start talking to this guy, William who’s coming in from Maine to check out Samwell and he’s also being recruited for hockey. And for a bit, it was really tight. He was talking about how he was still undecided, but he was leaning towards Samwell because their hockey program was amazing, blah blah, Jack Zimmermann, blah blah, how he worked on a lobster boat last summer to pay for his gear and it just seems like one of those real hard working cats that doesn’t know how to smile and has never actually met another black guy his age.”

“Ha, that happened with my first college roommate too. She nearly fainted when she heard that I was actually born in Detroit.” 

“So, you know the look, right? So then he asks me about what did I do to earn money for my gear.” Derek frowns down at his feet before continuing. “So, I tell him the truth, that you paid for it.”

“Oh boy.”

“So, then he like nods for a bit and I think that’s the end of it, but then he goes, ‘Your mom must really believe in you. I bet its really hard for single moms to get their kids to college, let alone pay for sport equipment.’”

Dana is speechless for a moment. “That’s one hell of a leap.”

“I know! So, I tell him, my mom and dad have been married for 25 years, together for 30. Thankfully he stops talking. But then Naimah rolls up in her Beemer and like Poindexter’s eyes get as big as saucers when she hops out and greets me. He’s staring so hard, that she looks over and is like, “Oh, you want a ride?””

“Go on.”

Derek continued, “He literally looks like a volcano. I can see the steam coming out of his ears as he readjusts his world view. He declines the ride and I’m like, cool. But of course we meet up again here and he can’t help himself, he starts talking again, like, ‘oh, what does your dad do? Is he a music producer or an athlete?”

Dana sucks a breathe through her teeth, hissing into the phone. “Oh wow.”

Derek scrunches up his face, and he can hear the regret in his tone. “I really wanted to be chill about it, but on the other hand, I thought about just being vague and being like, you ever watch Breaking Bad or the Wire?” But then Shitty, um, Bart, called me over and that was it.”

“One guy out of the team so far isn’t that bad.”

“Yeah, yeah, but then later, one of our teammates came out with gift baskets with homemade pie and cookies for everybody and I straight up thought he was the team manager, not the starting forward and left wing for Jack. So I didn’t start off on the best foot either.”

“Oh honey, no one is perfect, it takes hard work to reject stereotypes.”

Derek laughed, “Thanks, but in my defense, he looks like he was the model in the pictures that come with the frame. If he was in a boy band, he would unequivocally be the ‘cute one’. At first glance, the wind looks like it could pick him up and blow him away, but then he put on his skates and for a quick speed drill and like, oh my god. So fast.” Derek huffs, “It’s such a good team. The campus is great, and the English Department has so many published alumni. This is the closest to me getting everything I want.”

“So, that’s it. Samwell it is.” Dana smiled, “I’m so proud of you.”

“Chill, mom. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Oh honey, I’ve never been chill a day in my life. That’s your father who is also going to be so proud of you.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you and dad later?”

“Anytime and always.”

Derek hung up the phone with his mom and started to walk back towards the student lounge. Poindexter was sitting on the floor in the hallway, flipping an older iPhone back and forth between his hands. Derek was going just going to walk by when William said, practically to himself, it was so low, “I didn’t know you could play hockey and bake.”

Derek paused, “Why can’t you?”

“I just assumed that you couldn’t. I assumed a lot of stuff.” Dex nodded to himself, brow furrowed, “I need to swim in a bigger pond, I think.”

“Dude, are you an English major too?”

Poindexter looked up, and frowned, “No, I was thinking computer science.”

Derek felt himself soften, only a bit, only enough to mess with the guy, “Chill man, you are over there trying to spout some bad poetry, I thought that maybe you were going to sign up for English.”

For some reason, that got a small and practically involuntary smile. 

“So, I’ll see you at Samwell in the fall?”

Poindexter looked up, the ghost of a smirk still on his face, “Yeah, I’ll see you this fall.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at AirplanesandCookies on Tumblr.


End file.
